


When the Sun Sets

by bellyuppo



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Walking Dead Fusion, Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 10:20:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18658480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellyuppo/pseuds/bellyuppo
Summary: Aaron opens his eyes to a hospital room. He recalls how he got there, who put him there, and how to get out. What he doesn't recall is signing up to fight his way through a fucking zombie apocalypse.





	When the Sun Sets

**Author's Note:**

> Brains.  
> 

When he opens his eyes, it's to the even beeping of the monitor. He lies in bed, disoriented, trying to place where he is— _hospital—_ and how he got there— _GSW to the lower abdomen, the bullet lodged inside, it was a dirty shot from a dirty officer._ He tugs weakly at the IV strip, fingers tripping over the remote as he searches for the call button. There are balloons, and get well cards, a single stuffed bear, all strewn over the bedside table and window sill like they've been poured there. He feels the distinct urge to relieve himself, catheter stretching painfully from under his gown. The bag, when he tilts his head to see, is full and almost bursting, at which point he realizes that no one is coming.

The silence is eerie. There's a low whir coming from somewhere, probably the power generator or a fan, and the steady beeps of the vitals monitor that goes dead with a warning screech when he peels off the pads. Otherwise, it is utterly quiet. There is no commotion, no urgent footsteps or rolling wheels of transport, no lilts of conversation from patients and staff, no sounds at all of human life but his uneven breathing which grows more and more labored as he tries to avoid working himself into a panic.

Aaron eases himself up to a sitting position. He tried with the remote to raise the back of the bed but either he broke it with his frantic jabbing of the call button or it stopped working a while ago. He cinches his gown with one hand, even without anyone there to see him, liberating himself of the various medical equipment with the other, yanking when the adhesives prove particularly stubborn. He wobbles onto his feet, collapsing onto the bed only once when his knees are too unsteady to support him. The adjoining toilet is his first stop.

Face and hands scrubbed clean, they're barely dry before he teeters to the cabinet. It's the same off-white as the rest of the walls. Not terribly big but with enough size to fit a small stack of clothes and extra. He's been at the hospital enough times to know this is where belongings are stored but when he swings open the door the plastic wrap that should have contained them is torn, only a gaping hole in the place of his clothes and badge. Aaron tells himself he doesn't feel the floor slipping from under his feet after a long moment just counting the cracks in the back of the cabinet. He retreats, the door easing shut with a soft snick.

His stomach aches, making itself known with a low throb that promises to worsen with time and eventual drain of the proper analgesics. Aaron just circles the foot of the bed, coming to a stop at the curtain partitioning his corner from the rest of the room. He hears nothing. Smells nothing. In all likelihood there will be nothing beyond this puce-colored drape of fabric that does little to protect him besides curtailing his view of the other side, but he is inordinately fearful of what he'll find.

He thinks of Jack.

Haley.

His team.

He takes a slow, stale breath—ignoring the pounding rush of his heart beating in his throat—and draws the curtain.

—

Aaron exits the highway, trying to forget the scent of rot and the sight of multiple bodies lined up against one another in crooked rows like a hasty but meticulous dumping ground. His hands tighten over the wheel as he blinks, hunching in the jacket he swapped for his hospital gown in an out-of-the-way locker room on the sixth floor. He'd also snagged a pair of scrubs and rubber boots squeezed behind a cleanish mop from the supply closet nearby. He recalls the door to his room had been locked. There had been other locked doors.

_Zero survivors._

His stomach twinges. He's not entirely sure if it's from the wound or hunger or both. The dust has parched his throat too, but stopping to search for food or water is too great a waste to risk. As it is, he's going to have to hot-wire another vehicle; the gasoline symbol blinks feebly on the dashboard. Aaron flicks another glimpse at the deluge of cars clogging the opposite road. The road leading out of the city.

The car sputters to a halt fifty or so miles north of the residential district. Aaron surveys his surroundings, wondering if it's too soon to dread the moment when he finally gets home. Dread, he's rapidly discovering, is an emotion he'll become finely attuned to in the coming days—weeks, for all he knows, possibly months, maybe even years. For now, he can only hope it won't come barking at the heels of a dead family. Aaron knows himself. He knows he wouldn't recover from that kind of loss. The thought of reuniting with them is the only thing fueling him. Without it, he has nothing.

The street he's on is flanked by a gas station and a bank.

He chooses bank. And he meets his first walker.

—

He doesn't even pick up the term 'walker' until hours later.

" _Mmph-"_ he screams into the gag, as the mother-daughter duo attempts to wrestle his body into semi-manageable-and-uncritical health. He feels dizzy, a bit delusional, beads of sweat rolling down his face from a fever which, going off the symptoms of the transformation that he gleaned off his caregivers just before his legs gave out, probably bears a terrifying resemblance. The two, however, work tirelessly to reset the wound, up to their gloves in blood as they expertly wield a bottle of rubbing alcohol and twin needles while Aaron battles with the thought of a future in a fucking zombie apocalypse. He wants to laugh. Or cry. He does neither. Later, he'll wonder which he might have done were it not for the encroaching darkness that dragged him under and into blessed unconsciousness.

When he wakes for the second time, the windows remain newspapered and barricaded. A single lamp provides minimal warmth from the groans and water-logged limbs clapping against the walls of the house. If there are stars twinkling down from the night sky, then he cannot see them.

—

"This is SSA Aaron Hotchner," he croaks, gripping the radio until it mewls out a desperate creak. "Is anybody out there?"

He refuses to empathize with a goddamn radio. But his circumstances are looking pretty grim. The tank sways worryingly and Aaron shoots out a hand to clutch the notch by his head for balance. The cadaver he shot in the head plops onto his shoulder, displaced by the rebound back to the ground, painting him in gore. He elbows it back against the seat, once again swallowing the urge to retch all over his shoes.

"Please," he wheezes, eyes prickling. "Somebody, please, help."

A walker bangs into the hood of the tank, emitting a loud _clang._ Aaron just squeezes his knees tighter to his chest, resigned. He unfurls a bit, contemplating the last bullet in his revolver which is looking more and more tempting by the second.

The air trembles with the weight of a reverberating moan. Aaron shudders. Even through the metal of the tank it sounds _ravenous_.

He clutches the handle to his last remaining gun with the last remaining bullet. Decided, he concludes, because he doesn't want to die only to return glassy-eyed and straining for human flesh. His family—if they are alive, wherever they are—will just have to forgive him.

"At least," Aaron grins jaggedly, tear-stained and unhinged as he wedges the dry muzzle of the gun firmly under the curve of his jaw. "At least I won't be adding to the masses."

He mulls over that, huffing over the cool of the barrel, darkly amused.

_Aaron Hotchner, subverting protocol. And it only took death to get me there._

He's toggled back the safety, fully prepared to pull the trigger when the radio crackles to life.

"..He—o,... Can y— h—ear m....... 'El—..o...?"

Aaron freezes, staring at the small plastic box like it's the most alien device he's ever come across, incredulous and frightened and half-convinced his fear has punted him over the line to full-fledged hallucination. He stares at it some more, rendered numb, gun forgotten and discarded to the side as he hopes against hope that this isn't the product of his imagination.

His breath hitches as he shakily presses a thumb against the transmitter and jacks the volume up to max. "H-hello?" he ventures, gulping. "Hello, are you there?"

The speaker remains mute. Aaron cranes his ear for a sign, a buzz, anything to indicate this won't be another wearing thread on his already fracturing psyche. He considers praying. If it takes a god to get him there, he would readily convert to any religion, _every_ religion, that he or she or they demands. Silence answers him. It stretches, no matter how much he begs for it stop. He begins to lower his arm, eyes sunken and brimming with despair, when the radio rustles. Once, twice, it whistles, releasing a reedy pitch similar to what he remembers his childhood TV did every time it lost its signal. Aaron scrambles to his knees, clutching the apparatus like a lifeline, before he stills, belatedly refusing to make another move for fear of disrupting the frequency. The walkers, the despair, even the bloody corpse crouched behind him like a life-sized demonic puppet fades to the background as a voice jolts through, delivering with it his salvation, two words etched forever into his mind underscored by elated disbelief:

"Hello?  _Hotch?"_


End file.
